


It's Only a Paper Moon

by thevalleyarchive



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Ableism, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Content Warning: Ianthe Tridentarius, Disabled Character, F/F, Gen, Grad Student AU, Modern AU, PTSD, Schizophrenic Harrow, Unhealthy Relationships, ianthe gets therapy which maybe eventually helps a little, seriously if she does something shitty in canon she probably does it here too, that doesn't end well either
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:48:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26392909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thevalleyarchive/pseuds/thevalleyarchive
Summary: Ianthe Tridentarius is, and has always been, better than everyone else. She was better than her sister, the shining star on whom the world dotes. She was better than her academic advisor, who told her it was dumb to expect a doctorate program by the time she was 20. She was certainly better than that superstitious waif who somehow got into the program even younger than her. She has always been destined for greatness, and there's no way in hell that something as mundane as a car crash is going to shake her from her path.
Relationships: Harrowhark Nonagesimus/Ianthe Tridentarius
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40





	It's Only a Paper Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Just a head's up: This fic is about a deeply toxic person going through a lot of shit and hurting a lot of people who in no way deserve it. There will be some catharsis, but the ending I have planned is more bittersweet than happy. Please read with care.

There was a beeping sound, repetitive and aggravating, and it was driving Ianthe crazy. The world felt soft around her, light and floaty and gentle, like it was made of clouds. If it wasn’t for that awful noise, it would’ve been the most comfortable she’d been in a long time. As it was, the simple, dizzy joy of being was ruined by that incessant screech. If she could only find its source, then maybe she could get some sleep.

Ianthe wasn’t sure when she opened her eyes, or if they had always been open. It was so bright; her surroundings were a pure, blinding white that revealed only the barest hint of detail, detail that swam and bobbed as if on an ocean in a storm. If she was the kind to get motion sick, she would’ve, but instead she just felt wonderfully swoopy, almost giddy. Still, the beeping continued, determined to spoil her good mood. She resolved to utterly destroy whoever or whatever was responsible for it.

There was a cottony buzzing in her ears, Ianthe realized, distinct from the sound that had become her nemesis. It sounded like fluff had been stuffed into her eardrums, and she had the strangest certainty that it was, somehow, part of the general fabric of light that obscured her surroundings. She tried to reach up to her ears, to prize away the obstruction, but her body did not respond to her commands. She couldn’t really feel her body, she realized, and the realization did not fill her with the dread it should have. Instead, she focused as hard as she could, willing the blanket obscuring her sense to fall away. Slowly but surely, her hearing returned, and the light dimmed, and then she could make out her surroundings again.

She was lying in a hospital bed, looking up at the ceiling, a thin blanket pulled up nearly to her chin. She could feel that most of her torso was wrapped in bandages, but she didn’t feel any pain. At most, she felt swollen and sluggish, and not a little bit confused. The infernal beeping was coming from a monitor over her bed, its digital readout tracking her vitals.

Someone was dozing in a chair next to her bed. She was tall, her cloud of golden hair falling in tangles around a normally impeccable tan face that was currently showing the strain of someone who’d been crying a lot and hadn’t slept in awhile. Ianthe smiled.

“You look like shit, Corona,” she rasped, surprised by how dry her voice felt and sounded.

Her sister came awake with a start. Corona blinked hard twice, probably to clear the grit from her eyes. Wasted effort, since they immediately started brimming with tears again.

“Ianthe, you’re awake! Thank God,” Corona said. She moved at first as if to embrace her, but contented herself with placing a hand on Ianthe’s knee.

Ianthe rolled her eyes – she wasn’t that fragile! – and moved to take Corona’s hand, but she still couldn’t get her right arm to obey her. Her left arm was more responsive, though, and she let her hand rest on the back of Corona’s. Corona took her hand and squeezed, and Ianthe had to admit that it was a comforting feeling.

“How did I end up here?” Ianthe asked. “Did you drag me to one of your team parties again?” The last time she’d partied with the women’s lacrosse team, the hangover had lasted the entire next day, and she’d burned through a whole thing of concealer before the hickeys had fully healed.

“Ianthe…” Corona said hesitantly, “There was – you were in a car crash. Do you… do you not remember?”

She did now.

A flash of green. A shrill voice shrieked, “Fucking drive, Naberius!” The screech of rubber. An almighty thud. Sirens. Blood. A steering column.

Ianthe carefully let out a breath, deliberately relaxing each of the muscles that had suddenly tensed at the recollection. “I always knew Babs would get what was coming for him, sticking so close to the letter of the law. He should’ve been paying attention to the road instead of his driver’s manual. I’ll box his ears for dragging me into it.” She took a moment to check the room in case she’d somehow missed him earlier, but it was just her and her sister. “Nice to see he hasn’t left my bedside.”

“Ianthe,” Corona said, her voice strained and thin and reedy, “Babs is dead. He was dead on arrival.”

Ianthe blinked.

Blood. A steering column.

“Huh,” she said.

Corona shook her head numbly. “I just can’t believe it, you know? Like, what does the world even look like without him in it?” She sniffled slightly, wiping at her eyes. “Sorry,” she said, “Here I am feeling sorry for myself, and I can’t even imagine how you must feel.”

“I feel fine,” Ianthe said, and it was true. She removed Babs from her mental model of the world. That had a few implications she needed to think over, but nothing she couldn’t work around.

Corona was looking at her in a way that Ianthe found extremely irritating. “What?” she asked angrily. “He was a family friend, but he was no friend of mine.”

“Like hell he wasn’t!” Corona said, and Ianthe rolled her eyes. “He lived with you for years, and he – “

“Oh my god!” Ianthe exclaimed in delight, cutting her off, “This means I can take down those abominable band posters he insisted on displaying over the couch! Do you think I could get discharged today?”

“That’s not funny, Ianthe,” Corona snapped.

“I wasn’t joking, they’re terrible!” Ianthe sighed, feeling peeved. “Oh come on, it isn’t like he lived with me by choice! He would’ve moved in with you in a heartbeat if you let him, once you got tired of shacking up with the latest lesbian to move to Canaan.”

Corona’s eyes flashed, and her expression went dangerously placid. “If you’re trying to make me angry, you might want to reconsider,” she said mildly. “I may decide to leave you to recover alone.”

Ianthe put on her best sugary smile and matched her sister’s tone. “If the truth angers you, you should take that up with it. Besides, I’ll be out of here soon, so your presence makes little difference to me.”

Corona gave a harsh laugh and stood up. “Enjoy your month, Ianthe. I’m sure you can always call one of your _actual_ friends when you get bored.”

Ianthe let that jab go – friends were not a distraction she needed or wanted – and said, “Don’t insult me. As if I would need a month to deal with this giant bruise. I’ll be out of here by morning.”

She’d meant it as a parting sally, but Corona stopped and turned back towards her, a look of shock and pity twisting her face. “Do you not – “ she started to say, before shaking her head and cutting herself off. She walked back over, grabbed the top of the sheet that had been thrown over Ianthe, and pulled it back. “Look.”

Ianthe looked, and a sense of intense unreality set in.

Her right arm was indeed bandaged very tightly, but that wasn’t why she couldn’t move it. From shoulder to elbow, she was wrapped completely in white bandaging, and from elbow to fingertips her arm… wasn’t there. Which was insane. It had to be there; she could feel it, she could feel her forearm and her hand and her fingers, four and a thumb, and she could make a fist –

Nothing happened when she tried to make a fist, and an awful pain of nothingness seemed to reverberate up the nerves in her arm. Ianthe stared dumbly at the empty space where the rest of her arm should be and tried to find some angle, some trick of the light, some way in which her eyes could be deceiving her, because they _had to be deceiving her, she could still feel her arm_. Slowly, hesitantly, she raised her left hand to the empty space. She swiped through it, and there was nothing. There was no trick, no deception. No arm.

“They must be giving you some intense meds if you couldn’t feel that immediately,” Corona was saying. Her voice came to Ianthe as if from the end of a very long tunnel, maybe one that was underwater too. The world was spinning, its edges turning grey and then even darker to black, and Ianthe was falling, and then she was gone.

When she awoke, the lights in her room were off, and the only illumination came from the screen of Corona’s phone. The pale blue glow was enough for her to see by, though, enough to confirm that it hadn’t just been a bad dream. However much she might feel it, no matter how sure she was that she could reach out with it and snatch her sister’s phone from her if she only decided to, there was no denying that her arm was just gone.

Corona must’ve noticed her shift, because she looked up. “I hope you’re a little calmer after your nap,” she said.

Ianthe filed that slight away for later. Instead of retaliating, she asked, “How long?”

“A couple hours,” Corona said. “It’s dinner time. I just ordered pizza.”

A much worse thought flickered through Ianthe’s mind. “Corona, how long has it been since the crash?”

“Only two days,” Corona said. “And you woke up once on the first day, but you were totally incoherent. Not too bad, really.”

“Not too bad?” Ianthe said incredulously. “Corona, I have commitments! Tell me you at least thought to call Augustine!”

“Relax,” Corona said, rolling her eyes. “I’m not an idiot – “

“- verifiably untrue –“

“- I told Dr. Alfred that you’d been in an accident. He said that he was very sorry to hear that and that he wished you a speedy recovery, and that he was sure you’d be back in the lab in no time.”

“He’s goddamm right I will be,” Ianthe said. Her stomach turned over as she glanced over at her stump. How was she going to work a microscope without her hand? How was she going to prepare slides? Fuck, how was she going to _pipette_?

She must’ve let some of her thoughts show on her face, because Corona reached out and put a hand on her wrist. “Hey,” she said comfortingly, “you’ll figure it out.”

Ianthe snorted. “Of course I will.” She raised her left hand and flexed it experimentally. “Even my worse hand is far more capable than the best hand of anyone else.” Corona looked skeptical, so Ianthe added, “If you doubt me, ask your teammates. Several of them can attest to it, well, first hand.”

Corona blanched, and Ianthe pressed on vindictively. “There was one of them that was particularly receptive. What was her name again? Dolly? Ducky?”

Corona shuddered. “Please stop.”

“Why, have you fucked her too? Well, I know who she preferred,” Ianthe said with a savage smile.

“Ugh!” Corona exclaimed in disgust. “For the love of god, Ianthe! I don’t want to think about you having sex every time I look my friends in the face!”

Ianthe subsided with a smirk, satisfied. They sat together in silence for awhile, before Corona said, quietly, “I called Mom and Dad, too.”

Ianthe let out a grunt, ignoring the small, deep twinge of disappointed longing that she felt in her gut. “Glad to see that they haven’t left my bedside either.”

“They had a business trip,” Corona protested feebly.

“Oh, of course,” Ianthe said, her lip curling, “I wouldn’t want to inconvenience them. They only cancel those for real emergencies, like when you have a game, or an award ceremony, or a scholarship banquet.”

“They came to your scholarship banquet too,” Corona said defensively.

“It was the one that we _both_ won, Corona. Stop making excuses for them; it’s not a good look on you.”

“They’ll be here for the funeral,” Corona said.

“Oh wonderful!” Ianthe said with faux delight. “They’re more worried about their friend’s dead son than they are about their second favorite daughter, how flattering for me!”

“Ianthe…”

“I wonder if they’d be more worried about me if they knew that once I’m gone your good grades would turn ash,” Ianthe mused. Corona stiffened. Good. “Is that why you’re here?” she wondered aloud. “Are you just trying to figure out how long you’ll have to convince your teachers that there’s actually a brain in that pretty head of yours?”

“There’s no need to be cruel, Ianthe,” Corona said her tone and expression suddenly cold.

“Maybe I’ll just stop anyway,” Ianthe said, ignoring the warning signs written all over her sister’s face. “Maybe I’m tired of putting all of my talents towards keeping you afloat. It’d be fun to see how long it takes me to become the favorite child.”

Corona stood up and took a step towards her, and for a moment Ianthe thought that she was about to be attacked. Instead, Corona leaned in very close and whispered furiously, “I never asked for your help, and if you think that that’s why I’m here, then I’m done accepting it. Sorry that I’ve been such a fucking burden to you.” She spat the last sentence with more vitriol than Ianthe could ever remember being directed at her. Before she could form an appropriately biting retort, Corona stormed out of the room, leaving her alone in the dark.

Some time later, a nurse opened the door to her room. “A delivery driver brought you a pizza,” he said brusquely, and set it on the bedside table at Ianthe’s left. With some difficulty – turns out it’s hard to open a pizza box one handed without also pushing it away – Ianthe lifted the lid. The mouthwatering, delectably salty scent of anchovies reached her nose, and her stomach rumbled loudly.

Corona hated anchovies.

Ianthe firmly pushed their conversation from her mind and began the awkward, greasy task of eating.

* * *

A few days later, a doctor came into her room. He said a lot of meaningless, pedestrian drivel, stuff about how sorry he was for her loss, and for her arm, and about what that sort of wound would mean for the rest of her life. Ianthe smiled pleasantly and nodded along tepidly to everything he said, her mind busy with other, more important things.

She only tuned back in when he said, “- and here’s the number for your therapist.” He placed a small business card on her table.

Ianthe raised an eyebrow at him. “I wasn’t aware you did psych referrals. Nor do I believe I need one.”

The doctor, whatever his name was – it was short and started with an S, she thought, they should really have nametags – gave her a patient smile. “I’m sure you must be a little out of it right now,” he said voice dripping with kind, patriarchal condescension, “but once the shock wears off, you’re going to have to make peace with your… condition. Dr. Pent has worked with lots of amputees before – she used to take care of soldiers returning from the frontline.”

“I’m sure she’s very good, and I greatly appreciate your recommendation, Doctor,” Ianthe said in a voice so sweet that any sensible person would know they were being mocked, “but I don’t need any help readjusting. I am perfectly fine, and as you don’t have the legal power to compel me to see a therapist, I do not intend to. I would prefer that you let the matter drop.” She ignored the twinge of pain from her arm that was not there.

The doctor sighed exasperatedly, as Ianthe might if talking to a particularly dull child. “As you say, Ms. Tridentarius. How will you be paying for your stay here?”

The question caught Ianthe completely off-guard. “What do you mean?” she asked. “You have my insurance.”

“Insurance that you have through your parents, Ms. Tridentarius,” the doctor said, as though that were supposed to clear things up.

“What difference does that make?”

“Your parents called and specifically stated that, as a condition of using their insurance, you would be attending therapy. They seemed very worried about how you were dealing with the fallout of this very traumatic event.”

Blood pounded in her ears, and Ianthe gritted her teeth into the closest grimace she could manage to a smile. “How very kind of them to take such an interest in my wellbeing," she said.

* * *

Weeks later, Ianthe bit down hard on the inside of her cheek and tried to ignore the awful, crawling itch stretching from shoulder to fingertips as the doctor fitted a ridiculous, cumbersome prosthetic over her stump.

“This piece is designed to interface with your leftover nerve endings, rather than be operated with latches or levers,” said the doctor, whose name Ianthe had learned just long enough to deliberately forget it. “It still has those manual options, of course, but aren’t you lucky? If you didn’t live here in Canaan, you’d probably have to make do with a hook!” He laughed far too enthusiastically at his own shitty joke.

Ianthe gave him a thin smile as she imagined him being ripped limb from limb, screaming in agony. “You know, I actually work up at the biomed labs at the university,” she said pleasantly. Only the promise that, after this, she would finally be free to go got her to omit, _and that’s how I know how full of shit you are, and what a piece of overpriced crap this shoddy excuse for a prosthetic is_. With the device fully strapped on and hooked up, Ianthe gave it a whirl. Her new appendage moved shudderingly, sloppily up towards her, its ridiculous plastic pointer finger moving to touch its ridiculous plastic thumb. The whole process felt farcical and unresponsive and unnatural, and Ianthe couldn’t shake the irrational certainty that her real arm was buried somewhere inside this awful plastic facsimile, trapped and encased and rendered helpless.

The doctor looked delighted. “Fantastic!” he said, “You’ve already got the hang of it! We’ll just need to see you back here every week for awhile to do diagnostics and make sure you’re not having any problems.”

“I’m discharged, then?” Ianthe asked.

“Free as a bird,” the doctor said with his dumb, wide-mouthed smile.

But those words were all Ianthe cared about. She was going home.

* * *

It quickly became apparent that going home was going to be a lot more complicated than it had sounded. For one, Ianthe wouldn’t have trusted the hunk of garbage attached to her elbow to drive her car if her life depended on it. For another, her car wasn’t at the hospital. Presumably, it was still back at her apartment, gathering dust. She supposed she could subject herself to the horrors of public transit, but for some reason the thought made Ianthe feel unusually uncomfortable. Instead, she pulled out her phone.

Ianthe kept her contact list well-pruned, so it didn’t take long to examine her options. The obvious solution would be to call Corona, but Ianthe didn’t really want to see Corona right now. Apart from a few short text conversations, they hadn’t spoken since the day she’d woke up, which suited Ianthe just fine. It was the longest they’d ever been apart from each other, and Ianthe was not going to be the first one to ask for a meet-up.

Unfortunately, she didn’t trust any of the rest of her contacts enough to let them see her in her current, pathetic state. She glanced over them again, stubbornly hoping that a second pass would reveal something she’d missed, and her gaze settled on a name that made her pause, then smile. She pressed the call button.

“Hello?” came a high, suspicious voice from her phone.

Ianthe smiled. “Hey Harry,” she said sweetly. “They just let me out of the hospital. Come give me a ride home?”

The aggrieved sigh that came out of the speaker was music to her ears. “Fine,” said the voice, and then the call ended.

Ianthe leaned carelessly against a nearby column and whistled a cheerful tune. She was still whistling when an old black car pulled up in front of her, and the window rolled down to reveal the face of Harrowhark Nonagesimus.

Ianthe was always mildly surprised every time she remembered that Harrow could drive. Even for an eighteen-year-old she was tiny; Ianthe figured that all the extra mass had been burned up by her tumor of a brain. Ianthe had broken records by graduating with her Bachelor’s at the age of twenty and getting accepted into a Doctorate program, and then Harrow had come along the very next year and wrecked it, securing the same thing at eighteen. Not that Harrow was smarter than Ianthe, of course; if anyone was as much of a weirdo as Harrow, they’d have time to get ahead of the curve too. Her face was caked with the elaborate, skull-like makeup favored by that ridiculous cult – _sorry,_ _fringe sect_ , she thought mockingly – that Harrow belonged to.

“Hey Harry,” Ianthe said with a mocking wave, her prosthetic forearm jerking grotesquely with the motion. “See any beasts in the shadows on your way here?”

Harrow’s face turned even stormier. “Actually, I think I have the wrong stop,” she said, and started to roll up the window.

Ianthe reached over and grabbed the handle, pulling the door open and depositing herself in the creaky, uncomfortable passenger seat before Harrow could pull away. “Oh how I’ve missed you these past few weeks,” she said soppily. “Has the lab fallen apart without me?”

Harrow snorted. “Hardly. Augustine’s been furious, though. He and Mercy had a bet about who would get their next grant first, and your absence has put him far behind schedule.”

“I imagine Mercy’s been just a joy for you to work with, then?” Ianthe asked.

“Isn’t she always?” Harrow deadpanned, and Ianthe had to laugh at that.

Ianthe raised her right arm dramatically. “Maybe she can use her next grant to sue the everliving shit out of whoever’s been mangling her research.”

Harrow glanced away from the road for a moment to take in the details of Ianthe’s prosthetic, and she felt a quick pang of anxiety. Then Harrow turned back away with a derisive snort. “She just might.” They were both quiet for a moment. Then Harrow said, “Augustine’s going to be furious, by the way. Your sister only told him that you’d been hospitalized – we didn’t know that you’d lost your hand.”

“I still have the other,” Ianthe said, wiggling it, savoring how responsive it was, how natural, how her. That was something she would never take for granted again. “I don’t expect to have any trouble.”

Eventually, they arrived at her apartment building. Looking up at the building, towards her balcony on the third floor, Ianthe let the simple pleasure of being back in her own space wash over her.

That pleasure did not last as long as she thought it would. As she stepped out of the car, she felt suddenly overwhelmed by the question of what, exactly, she would do once she got up there. The thought of attempting to get any sort of work done, or of simply turning the pages of a book, was ruined by the knowledge of how little her right arm could be relied upon. Even the promise of disposing of Naberius’s ridiculous decorations failed to bring her any true joy; all she could think of was how much bare, undecorated wall space would be left behind, and putting up new hangings was simply out of the question at the moment.

Ianthe heard Harrow mutter a farewell, and she quickly spun back around before she could depart. “Would you like to come upstairs with me?” she asked, wondering what exactly had gotten into her.

Harrow looked at her suspiciously. “If you’re trying to lure me to my death, I’d have thought you’d be more subtle about it.”

“I work in a biomed lab, Harry, give me some credit; my contingency plan for your murder is much more medically interesting,” Ianthe said, affecting a careless wave with her left hand. The gesture felt unnatural and uncoordinated with that one too, but it was better than the alternative.

“Then what exactly is it that you want?”

Ianthe didn’t have an answer, but as she hesitated, one came to her, an idea ridiculous and delicious and full of so much potential that she just couldn’t resist it. “I need a new roommate,” she said with a smile. “My old one is no longer paying rent. I thought you might at least want a look at the place before you signed on the dotted line.”

Harrow made a choking sound. “You can’t be serious.”

Ianthe shrugged. “What can I say? You can at least hold a conversation, so that already puts you above the guy before you. And I know how dreary your current accommodations are – unless you prefer those shriveled old crones hovering over you all the time.” She leaned in with a smile. “Come on, you know how much fun I am. Don’t you want a little more fun in your life?”

Harrow looked back at her coldly, and Ianthe felt her sudden burst of interest and excitement curdle. She resigned herself to a strange, uncomfortable evening in the one place that she had hoped would feel comfortable again.

“I’ll consider it, Tridentarius,” she said finally, and Ianthe felt her face spasm in surprise. Harrow's face, on the other hand, remained unreadable. “But you owe me.”

Ianthe snorted. “Please, I’m doing you a favor. Besides, you’re not done owing _me_ yet, Harry.”

Harrow’s nostrils flared. “That sobriquet dies here, or I drive away. I’ll be fascinated to hear how you manage rent.”

A clever move on Harrow’s part, and a lapse on hers. Ianthe let the irritation at being outmaneuvered flow though her and away, and instead focused on the positive. After weeks of unrelenting drear, Ianthe could now be certain that dull moments would be few and far between.

She smiled. “Alright, Nonagesimus. Right this way.”

Ianthe turned away and began to climb the stairs. A few moments later, Harrow followed.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a side project, so updates will likely be infrequent and irregular. Thanks for reading!


End file.
